Printable View
John C. is an 89 year-old WWII-era veteran and resident at an independent living facility for Seniors in the Detroit Metro area. He is an avid reader and recently has digested both popular press articles and biomedical abstracts on the role of strength decline in aging and the potential of training older adults for strength and muscle restoration and retention.
Read article
Sully, thank you for the article on your work with John. I appreciate your insights and clarity...and your weekly newsletter!
Sign up for the newsletter
Awesome article, thanks for digging this one up again.
So I am a PTA who recently discovered the starting strength method. I'm about 6 weeks into my first linear progression, reading the blue book and watching SS videos pretty much every night. I work in a retirement community that includes AL, IL and memory care for beginning and late stage memory care, about 90% of my patients are 90 years old and above. Starting Strength makes so much sense to me that it has made me rethink so much of how I train myself and my patients. So much so that I feel really bad about how I train my patients who are being seen mostly for "decreased strength and mobility" diagnoses. I can tell you now the prescribed programming for 90% of nursing home patients, recumbent elliptical x 10 minutes, seated knee extensions, knee flexions, hip flexions, hip abductions and ankle pumps x 20 reps with body weight to 3 pound ankle weights followed by "gait training" (supervised walking). I struggle so much as to how I can better strengthen these people in an effective manner, reading this article has given me some encouragement as the thing I have been focusing the most on is sit to stand progressions to mimic squats, varying the seat depth, adding a dumbbell or med ball, using 1 upper extremity support vs none. Like the patient in this article almost none of the 90+ year old patients can do any pressing, I will start doing standing bar curls. Other than that I don't have access to the equipment in my setting to progress their resistance past 5 pound ankle weights and 10 pound dumbbells. If there is more literature on training this population in the SS community please direct me to it.
If a senior trainee cannot fully extend the elbows with the bar in the correct lockout position (in line with the back of the neck) then Dr. Sullivan considers the press a contradiction. Is there any wiggle room here? Could a senior of say 75 gain the mobility necessary to eventually lockout the press correctly? Is a slight forward angle at lockout with slight elbow flexion a definate contraindication of the press and what dangers does this pose to the trainee?
Depends in the reason for the ROM deficit. Bony arthritis cannot be "stretched."
